California Condor Eben McMillan 5 November 1963 I put my bed down last night on the Tejon flats out from the mouth of Pastoria Canyon. Coyotes were heard calling during the early morning hours. It was cloudy at sunrise and a south wind was blowing. Showers were falling in the Mt. Pirios and Tecuya Peak areas. Cowboys had worked a herd of cattle yesterday in a fence corner about one-half mile north of Pastoria Corrals and in the field that runs along the foothills to Tunis Canyon from this corner. Two young cows, with milk running from their swollen teats, were standing in a fence corner adjacent to the field where they were worked yesterday. Evidently they had been gathered and put into this strange field without knowledge that their young calves were hidden somewhere in the foothills of the field from which these cows were taken yesterday. One wonders if these cows will be discovered and returned to their calves before it is too late. At one time within the last hundred years Valley Oaks (Quercus lobata) grew along the water courses that march from the [illegible] main mountain mass, of the Tehachapi Mountains, down through the low foothills before spreading out on the flats below. The gaunt remains of these trees can still be seen standing dead or lying prostrate in various stages of decomposition. No new Valley Oak can be found growing anywhere and only a few scraggly adult trees mark their former range near the upper areas close to the mountains. Tunis Canyon does have several of these Oaks following its course down about one-half mile from where it leaves the main mountain mass. Most Natives blame this lack of trees, of this variety, on less rainfall in recent years. I doubt this is the case. Livestock now destroy every seedling of Valley Oak that germinates. With no new trees coming on and the life-span of